


Invictus

by Crait



Category: Avengers (Comics), Iron Man (Comics), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Identity Porn, M/M, Retelling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-03 12:51:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14569413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crait/pseuds/Crait
Summary: Unstoppable force, meet immovable object.





	Invictus

Captain America's in the kitchen, back safe and sound from his camping trip. Not a concept Tony ever expected he'd have to wrap his head around: Captain America, in the kitchen, with a teaspoon. Put a pin on it. Done. As conceptual difficulties go, it really isn't much of anything—certainly not on par with circuit miniaturization, or the n-body problem, or the reality of suddenly cohabitating with half a dozen other people in the shell of a house that still echoes with the clack of his mother's heels on marble.

What really turns his head inside out is the immediacy of it, of his (call it what it is) desperation to keep Cap right here, right now, with the Avengers, in the present. The big guy was beside himself when he heard that Reed Richards had cracked the problem of time travel; it was written all over his raw, earnest features, and in spite of his polite curiosity, there was a distance in how he interacted with his new world. Tony couldn't blame him for that, even if on an instinctive level he wants to blame somebody.

The kind thing to do—not the logical thing, but the kind thing—would've been to pack Rogers off to Richards with a couple of winning lottery numbers, two fake identities, and a clap on the back. Tony wants to believe that if not for the potentially catastrophic consequences to the time stream, he'd have been a good enough man to do just that, but instead he's left with doubt and the unflattering certainty that he'd have pulled out every last stop to keep Cap from leaving no matter what. Like a driver dangling a carrot in front of a mule: that was how he'd hung seven decades of achievement in front of Rogers. Why go back _there,_ to war and a home that will never deserve you, when you could be _here,_ where we've fixed polio and flown to the moon?

He can't explain it, but he's aware that the root of the impulse is selfishness. It always is. Engineer, know thyself.

"Mister Stark," Rogers says. He's stirring a spoonful of sugar into a mug of tea so delicately that the only sound is a soft sursurrus of liquid against porcelain. It's a reflex that brings to mind Maria Stark saying _Easy, Tony, you don't have to beat it to death._

"Captain Rogers." It's only a little mocking. Tony's exhausted, cut him a break. "How'd the camping treat you? No, wait, let me guess… you reaffirmed your connection with nature and the wide-open spaces of America and now stand ready to resume your defense of hearth and home."

Cap blinks. "That—uh," he says. "That seems like a pretty tall order for a camping trip."

"I wouldn't know," Tony shoots back. "Not much time to camp."

"That's a shame," Cap says. "It's mostly lazing around a campfire and not bathing."

If that's the first time Cap catches him off-guard with a sense of humor, it won't be the last. Tony, who thought he was too tired for any expression of feeling outside of sarcasm, barks out a laugh. 

"Not that I'm any sort of expert," Cap adds. "Grew up in a city and shipped off. Although I guess war's a little like camping."

"Hurry up and wait?"

Cap seems startled and a little pleased. His eyelashes are fine, so fine and so blonde that in the bright light of the new industrial kitchen they look like gold threads fanning out from his eyelids. "People still say that?"

"Sure," Tony says. "I know the future promised jet packs and flying cars, but we haven't figured a way to engineer clichés out of the common human. Yet."

"I'd take a DVD player over a flying car," Rogers says. 

"Yeah? You like movies, Cap?"

"Sure. Who doesn't?" He lays his spoon in the sink, picks up his mug, blows across the top, and abruptly looks both startled and bashful. Some small part of Tony, a part that's still struggling to connect _Captain America_ and _in my kitchen_ and _capable of looking bashful_ , marvels. "Sorry. Guess I should've offered to make you something. I know it's your kitchen, but if you want—" 

"Thanks," Tony says, "but I'm a coffee man." At this point, he has more of the black stuff than blood in his veins. An intravenous supply would probably make more sense, although he'd miss the placebo effect of merely holding a cup of coffee: the way it counters the haze of a hangover or breaks through a block on inspiration. Both are hanging point-down over him tonight, although they're merely comorbid conditions to the greater affliction that sits beneath his ribs and keeps him nightly from sleeping.

"Sounds like your entire company runs on joe." 

Maybe that's why he was so desperate to keep Cap around, other than the purely logical. When they found him, he was clad in mail with gleaming shield. Maybe at the root of everything, Tony's less concerned with historical accuracy than narrative truth: out of the water they drew him, a knight from a bygone age of heroes. That's a flight of fancy he'd never allow himself to admit out loud, but it's written across his life for anyone who cares to look. Nobody would invent several hundred new patents to make possible a suit of armor of their own without a poorly-disguised romantic streak, would they?

Rogers had said something. Tony replays the last few seconds and manages to come up with, "What?"

"Iron Man made a joke about… I can't remember the name. Some shop that sells coffee. Said there's one on every corner."

For the first time since he walked into the kitchen, Tony remembers that he isn't Iron Man, not in any meaningful way. (For the purposes of this conversation, let "meaningful" indicate a public knowledge of his identity, his goals, his role in the Avengers but not of the dual role of the Iron Man as a medical prosthesis.)

"Starbucks."

"That's it." Rogers raises his mug in a casual salute. He has an unusual way of moving, Tony noticed that right off the bat; he's spare, controlled but somehow not tight or tense. It's an economy of motion that approaches constant grace and turns even a half-joking toast with a bright yellow mug into something fascinating and Arthurian. Tony understands the lucky-shot biochemistry behind the super soldier serum, but he doubts that grace is manufactured. Either Rogers was born with it, or he earned it in the theater of war.

He isn't in mail now, though. He's wearing a plain white t-shirt and khaki slacks, and his hair flops down to cover one eye. He must feel incredibly, titanically…

Alone.

Tony knows something about that.


End file.
